Wish I could give one of those sweet sugary messages for Mother's Day, but I'll be honest with you in a culture that's going down the drain, I think I would be doing you a disservice if I did that in a culture where our children and grandchildren are slipping away from the Lord, leaving the church. You know, we have examples of churches growing. This is one of them where we've seen great growth in the last three or four years. But in the last 20 years, the net growth in the American church is zero. That means we're not reaching our children at all. We're not reaching our grandchildren at all. In fact, it means we're going backwards. If you're not going forwards, then you're definitely going backwards. And in a time where the church is under attack, really from every side, we're under attack from the evolutionary issue, we're under attack from The Da Vinci Code, the Judas gospel. You know, it's amazing to me how this junk comes out. You know, I'm reading some things this week about, well, you know, that the Judas gospel really needs to be taken seriously. It was in the fourth century and it was thrown away because it was blasphemous and it was false. And the church knew that and they rejected it. This is nothing new. But the attacks continue to come. And the scary thing is that the nominal Christians will fall prey to this stuff. And your children, my children, our grandchildren, if we don't do a good job educating them in the ways of the Lord and the word of the Lord, then they will fall victim to this kind of baloney as it comes up in years to come. And we have a responsibility. So as much as I would like to keep it all sugary, I really can't because we've got a job to do. Now, look, the message today is going to be pointed to moms. But the application is to dads, grandmas, grandpas, teachers, anybody that's influencing children in any way. You need to think about the principles that God's giving us today in this text. We're going to look at Exodus two. You want to turn your Bibles there. It's a story of Moses and his mom. You can go ahead and stand up. Moses and his mom. And in this story, mom is hiding the baby because Pharaoh said, look, the Israelites were getting too many of them. And if we don't do something, they're going to rise up and overthrow us. They'll partner with our enemies and they'll destroy us and we'll lose our power. So they came up with the plan to kill all the male children. And they've been doing that for some time. And then Moses is born. Exodus chapter two. Now, a man of the house of Levi married a Levite woman and she became pregnant and gave birth to a son. When she saw that he was a fine child, she hid him for three months. But when she could hide him no longer, she got a papyrus basket for him and coated it with tar and pitch. Then she placed the child in it and put it among the reeds along the bank of the Nile. His sister stood at a distance to see what would happen to him. Then Pharaoh's daughter went down to the Nile to bathe and her attendants were walking along the riverbank. She saw the basket among the reeds and sent her slave girl to get it. She opened it and saw the baby. He was crying and she felt sorry for him. This is one of the Hebrew babies, she said. This is Then his sister asked Pharaoh's daughter, shall I go and get one of the Hebrew women to nurse the baby for you? Yes, go. And the girl went and got the baby's mother. Pharaoh's daughter said to her, take this baby and nurse him for me and I will pay you. So the woman took the baby and nursed him. When the child grew older, she took him to Pharaoh's daughter and he became her son. She named him Moses saying, I drew him out of the water. One day after Moses had grown up, he went out to where his own people were and watched them at their hard labor. And he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his own people. God, I pray this morning for some courageous moms, for some moms who will stand where you stand and love their children and protect their children and help their children to grow up in the fear and the admonition of the Lord. Father, I pray that You would challenge us this morning with the truth of your word, that, Lord, you would deliver a message that would not leave us unchanged, regardless of our position in life. God, if you left us here, you've left us here with a purpose. So I pray that you would speak to us today in Jesus name. Amen. Amen. You may be seated. You probably know the story of the homeless man here locally who was beaten to death. And certainly people are innocent until proven guilty. But I want to share with you just a little bit about the story of one of the boys as reported in the news journal. You probably read it. It said in first grade, he was found smoking marijuana. He also stole a computer that year. For his 18th birthday, he was given water bongs, a pipe, a sack of weed and bottles of wild turkey bourbon. all from his mother. Now, I'm not here to pick on that mother. I'm here for all of us to rethink how we do parenting and to rethink our responsibility, because Peter says in Second Peter 311, you ought to live holy and godly lives. That means we're to be separate. We're to be different from the people of the world. And while I wish desperately that I could just pat everybody on the back and say, aren't we doing a great job? Let's go home and have a great day. The truth is, When Jude wrote his letter right next to the end of the. into the book and Jude and in Revelation, he said, I wish I could talk to you about salvation. I wish I could talk to you about how great it's going to be when we get to heaven. I had a friend here last week, Justin Miller. He's a preacher over in Claremont. Just just doing great things. They God bless them. They don't even have this building yet. They're still in the building next door. They've got a little bitty building there in five services. They're running eight hundred and fifty. I said, Justin, it's so exciting to see what God's doing through you and through the ministry there. And I said, I wish I had time to talk to you. He said, Joe, we'll have time to talk when we get to heaven. We got things to do now. And I thought, you know, he's right. And that's what Jude is saying. He said, I wish I could spend my time just talking about heaven and how great it's going to be. But right now we're in a mess in our culture and we need to contend for the faith that we need to fight for the faith. And the thing is, our children's souls are on the line. And if that doesn't scare you, I don't know what else will. You know, I was I was pretty much living free, like probably most everybody was growing up until my first child was born. That was her up here with the mom rock shirt. And I will tell you what, something clicked inside of me. I mean, it was like you are responsible for a soul. She's going to go to heaven or hell based on what you do. You talk about something changing somebody. That's really the turning point in my life. And it ought to be for all of us. I don't care how old your kids are. That ought to be what changes us to realize, hey, somebody else's destiny is in my hands and it's in my life and I'm responsible for them. Moms, look, we need we need. Mothers who are not ashamed of the gospel, moms who will say, look, this is what God says and this is where I'm going to stand and this is where I'm going to live. And this is how I'm going to lay it out. And we're as a family, we're going to follow Christ. Listen, I understand the man is the head of the home, but I also know who turns the head. And I know that, mama, if you want something badly enough, that you find a way of making that happen. And it is so important that our children have that godly influence in their lives and moms. I don't care what else you do. I don't care what you're involved in your life. Your highest calling is to be a mom and to pray for your kids and to teach them the word of God and to make sure they're faithful in the Lord. And we're going to talk more about that as we go along. But this text this morning reveals a mother's responsibility. The first one is in verses one to 10, and that responsibility is to protect your children spiritually. Now, I want you to think about that. We do our best to protect them physically in some ways, but I want to ask you some questions this morning. I'm going to read it because I want to make sure I don't miss anything. Would you take your child to a crack house for vacation? Would you take them to a porn theater or strip club? Would you take your children to a liquor store and let them hang out for the day? Would you take them to be a part of a murder or robbery? Well, I would hope that the answer would be no in all of those situations. But the truth is, you're inviting it right into your home. TVs, direct TV, cable, the computer, the games they're playing. Oh, it can't be that bad. You're right. It's a lot worse. It is a lot worse than we could ever imagine. And you can gloss it over all you want. You can you can read what the people say. Oh, it doesn't make that much difference in their life. Or you can look at what's happening in our culture and you can realize that it does. And people say, well, you can't protect your children forever. You know what? You're right. But I can protect them as long as possible. You do it. You don't say, you know what? I can't keep them from playing in the street when they're 21. So why bother telling them now? because I'm responsible for physically and spiritually. Proverbs 2.11 says that discretion will protect you. And that's not being taught to our kids anymore. We're not teaching them to be discreet, how to live modestly, to to be faithful to God, the basic principles of Scripture. And it says in this text that mom and dad hid Moses for three months. That's hard to do when you've got an army looking for the babies and they're trying to kill you. Now, I don't know what Moses looked like, but mom said he was a good looking child. I don't know any mom that hasn't said that. Whether God put a halo on Moses, you know, I don't know if there was something special about Moses or not. Maybe God did trigger them that there was something special about this kid. I really don't know. But they did the best they could to hide him. And when they couldn't hide him anymore, they came up with a plan. put him in a basket, sent him down the river, but made sure that the attendants were outside. Now, this is probably taking place in Memphis, which is just south of Cairo. And they're floating the baby down the river and gets picked up and he ends up being raised in Pharaoh's court. Now, if you're keeping score, the lady that raised him, her name was Hatshepsut. And her funerary temple and everything is down in the Valley of the Kings. And the reason she took Moses was because she had two kids. They both died. And she is the favored queen. But it doesn't matter how favored you are. If you don't have an heir, then the other queens are going to get all the attention. And so she adopted Moses so that her son would be the next Pharaoh, so that the others wouldn't be able to usurp her son's authority. So she makes this move to pull him out of the river. But the sister is walking along the side and praying and no doubt mom and dad are praying seriously to protect their baby. Can you imagine? putting your baby, floating them down. I don't care whether somebody's down there or not. There's no guarantee anybody's going to take that baby, even when they float him down the river. And today, the Nile has no crocodiles in it. They're all down south. They got stuck behind the dam down, down at Aswan. But at that time, the crocodiles all over that river. This is scary thing to do. But they've done everything they could to protect him as long as they could. And this is their last shot. to let God use this baby's life. Here's a prayer for you. It's in Psalm 511. It says, God, please spread your protection over my children now. I'm going to give you now, you can write this down and then you can check out the rest of the day if you want. I'm going to give you the dumbest statement that I have ever heard. And I hear it all the time. It's not like I hear I've heard it once. In fact, I heard it just within the last week. Somebody said this to me, not in the church. I'm thankful they said, yeah, my kids go to church sometimes. You know, it's not bad. They get to mix with some other kids and it's not a bad thing. But I figure when they get older, they'll decide for themselves what they're going to do. I thought, how dumb are you? I didn't say that. Kids are going to make their decision what they're going to do with their life between ages five and 14. Ninety five percent of American kids that have not accepted Christ by age 14 never will. So you're saying you're going to let your kids decide whether they go to heaven or hell. Well, ultimately, that's true. We're all going to do that. They're going to make their own choice. But what what you're saying is I don't want any input in that. They want to go to hell. Hey, let them go. That's their choice. That's not parenting. That's certainly not Christian parenting. Our role is to raise our kids up, to learn to love the Lord and to protect them spiritually. What good is the gospel if we don't even share it with our own children? But you want to know why we don't? I'll tell you why. Because most of us are living casual Christian lives, we're not really sold out to Christ. Coming to church is just like going to lunch. And until we get serious in our faith, we really don't have anything to pass on. So how should we protect our children, Sue? Just go ahead and put all four of them up there. Here they are. You can write them down. All right. Now, I want you to notice. None of those has anything to do with your children, per se. Watch what you watch, watch what you hear, watch where you go and be a proactive Christian. That means you're living your faith. It's not just something on Sunday morning, but you're you're living it out. Now, why is that so important? Because you can teach your children everything in the world. And if they don't see it in you, it's never going to work. In fact, we can teach your children everything now, you know, years ago, and some of you may have grown up this way, where the parents dropped you off at church. And, you know, it's a tragic way to raise your kids. Oh, yeah, they're getting the gospel until they're old enough to be like you and go home and sit on the couch and not be active in their faith, not follow Christ. And obviously it's the wrong pattern. But let me tell you this, you can be sitting in this room and do the same thing. You bring your kids to church, you come to church. But when you go home, there's nothing real that follows you. Because our teachers can teach them everything in the world about what to watch and what not to watch. But if they see you watching the wrong things, we just threw everything out the window. That's why it's important that you and I get it right first as we're sharing it with our kids. And we'll talk some more about that in a minute. First Corinthians 13, seven says love always protects responsibility. Number two is in verse 11, and that is to teach your children who they are in Jesus. Now, Let me tell you what's sad about what I'm going to tell you. There are two groups of people that do this very well, the Jewish mothers and the Islamic mothers. And that's why you see five year olds in the Islamic world carrying machine guns, because they understand what they've been taught. Religion of peace. You can make a note of that on your own, but they understand who they are. Now, if Islamic moms can do that and Jewish moms can do that, why are we failing as Christian parents? And the answer is because we don't take it seriously, because for them it's life or death. You got to know who you are as a Jewish person because people are going to try to kill you. You've got to know who you are as an Islamic person because people are trying to kill you. And meanwhile, the Christian parents just kind of float on through life. You see, when they crossed the Red Sea after the Passover, after all that had taken place, God spoke to Moses and he said, every year I want you to have another one of these Passover meals. And Moses said, why? And God said, so you can tell your kids what I did so they don't forget who they are and so they don't forget who I am. When they crossed over the Jordan River, when Joshua led them into the promised land to take Jericho, they took each tribe, took one big stone out of the Jordan River and they piled them up on the other side. And Joshua said, why are we doing this? And God said, for the generations to come, when people come by and your kids come by and they see that pile of rocks and they say, hey, what's that all about? You tell them, hey, God delivered us, God brought us through dry ground and takes them back and they're allowed to tell that story all over again. Deuteronomy 6 says, teach it to your children. In the Old Testament, there were three feasts that the Israelites were required to keep. Week-long feasts where all they did was sit around and talk about the past, what God had done, how God had blessed them, how God had provided. Now, if the Jewish people can get this right, why can't we as followers of Christ? Jewish kids, even today, Orthodox Jewish children by age 18 and memorize the entire Old Testament. And we squawk about memorizing a couple of verses. Ephesians 1 verses 13 and 14 talks about who we are in Christ, that that's we've got the Holy Spirit, the protection from God, the gift of eternal life. All the blessings of God are ours through Christ. And we're not getting that across to our children who they are, who they are in Christ, so that when they're old, they don't depart from that. He said, well, how did Moses get this in him? Well, you remember that his sister went to, went to Pharaoh's family and said, well, how about I get you somebody to take care of the baby and took her right back to mom. And mom actually got paid to nurse her own child. That's, that's kind of a God deal, how that works out. And at that period of time, they nursed until the kid was about five years old. And so by the time he's five years old, mom's had every, all the opportunities she's ever going to have. to put who he is into him. And yet that verse I read you in verse 11, which is kind of a hanger to leave on, but it said when he was grown up, they spent his whole life studying in Pharaoh's court, finest education in the world, finest food, finest wine, finest of everything. He saw an Egyptian and one of his own people in a fight. Now, I'm not suggesting we do what he did. He didn't handle it the right way. But the point is, at five years old, he knew who he was and he never lost it. Because Mama put that in him. And moms, really, you're the ones tucking them in at night most of the time. You're the ones singing the songs with them. You're the ones that are with them to control the music that's going into their head. It is so imperative that you be the one to bring them up in the fear and the admonition of God. 1 Corinthians 6.20 says, You were bought with a price. Therefore, honor God with your body. Our kids need to hear that. They need to be reminded of that. My friend Steve Walker is a preacher out in Seattle. And he tells the story that I think is the best thing I've ever heard. Please feel free to steal it. Most of your children are not here, so you can you can use this. But dad was in a conversation with his kids. You've probably been there if you stood up for Christ. And they said, well, the movie's not that bad, dad. There's just a little bit of language in it. There's just a little bit of violence and killing in it. There's just a little bit of nudity in it. It's it's really not that bad. And so the battle went on as it always does. And dad held his ground and the kids went off. And then later on, dad announced to the kids that he was going to fix brownies for dessert. And that kind of perked him up. And when they came in, he said, I want you all to know that the ingredients are ninety nine percent pure in the brownies, he said. But I mixed in just a little bit of of dog do. But he said, it's not much. It's not much. And he said, it's the same color. So what difference could a little bit make? And dad got his point across. You know what? Sometimes we as adults need to be reminded of that when we say, oh, it's not that bad. Oh, it's not that much violence. It's not that much nudity. It's not that much bad language. How much is acceptable? before it's wrong. Second Corinthians 617 says, therefore, come out from among them and be separate. Now listen to what I'm telling you here. You've said this to your kids. You need to hear it from an adult to an adult. You and I are supposed to be different. I don't care if the whole world is doing it. I don't care if you can cite a million Christians that are doing what's wrong. You and I are still responsible to do what's right. So let's get some application on this then. Why does who we are matter? Well, number one, the kids need esteem. I don't like the word self-esteem because I think it's contrived, but I think God esteem is important. And you can argue with me all day long about, you know, how the Islamic kids turn out or how the Jewish kids turn out. But the truth is they know who they are because they've been taught. And what would happen if our generation rose up and said, we're going to make sure our kids grow in the Lord, know who they are. There's no question. So when the tough battles come, they already are connected to God, which leads to the second one, which is their purpose. that they know that they're here to glorify God. So now all they got to do is figure out how to do that. Well, God may want me to be a teacher. God may want me to sing. God might want me to be all kinds of things. But I know that my ultimate purpose in life is very simple, and that is to bring glory to God. And then thirdly, when everybody else's kids are out trying to find themselves in alcohol and crack and meth and sex and pornography and everything else, Your kids will already have found themselves because they know who they are. They've been taught all their lives who they are. Now, listen to me. I don't care how old your kids are. Now would be the time to start the process. The third responsibility is in verses 23 and 29 to 29 of Hebrews 11. If you want to turn, I want to I want you to see how the story ends up Hebrews chapter 11. And this is to teach your children to live by faith. Hebrews 11, verse 23. By faith, Moses parents hid him for three months after he was born, because they saw that he was no ordinary child, and they were not afraid of the king's edict. By faith, Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be known as the son of Pharaoh's daughter. He chose to be mistreated along with the people of God, rather than rather than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a short time. He regarded disgrace for the sake of Christ as of greater value than all the treasures of Egypt, because he was looking ahead to his reward. By faith, he left Egypt, not fearing the king's anger. He persevered because he saw him who is invisible. By faith, he kept the Passover and the sprinkling of blood so that the destroyer of the firstborn would not touch the firstborn of Israel. By faith, the people passed through the Red Sea as on dry land. But when the Egyptians tried to do so, They were drowned. Where did Moses faith come from? Well, it comes from mom and it says that Moses saw him who was invisible. What does that mean? Well, you have to understand, Egypt is the world of gods. Everywhere they turned, there was another god that they could worship. They looked up, they saw gods. They looked in the river, they saw gods. Everywhere they look, there's a god to be worshipped. But it said Moses saw the one who was invisible, the one who's above all of this world. because mom had put that into him. She had taught him to live by faith. And I dare say, I think God was working in Moses' life all along. The reason Moses lives the life he lives and takes all these great steps of faith is because what mom did in the first five years. I am convinced that that is the key to his life. You look at that, it said, by faith he refused to be known as Pharaoh's daughter. Now that's a tough thing to do. It's hard to turn your back on the number one position in the world. And that's what he had. Pharaoh is king of the universe at that particular time. And Moses is in line for that position. And he walks away from it. He walks away to go tend sheep for the next 40 years, just assuming that that's what he's going to do with his life. And you know what we can read in the Bible about the faith of Adam, the faith of Abraham, the faith of Moses, the faith of Joshua, the faith of Esther and all that's good. And your kids need to know those lessons and you need to know those lessons. But what your children need to see is faith being lived out in your lives and my life. That's really what's going to get them. You take a step of faith. You make a commitment that's so big. I don't care whether it's a financial one, a service one, a ministry one, a mission one. You know, what about us? What are we going to say? You know, you get them together. I remember when our kids were very young, we sat at the kitchen table one time and we prayed, God, we don't have any winter coats for our kids and we don't have any money and we have no way to get them. And a day later, nobody knew this. We didn't tell anybody. And a day later, somebody from the church came over and said, hey, are those our kids or grandkids? Somebody they've outgrown these coats. Did your kids use them? You know what? That's a story that we can go back and live for the rest of our lives. Because we had to trust God and we saw the results. What what are your kids going to say about you? Are they going to say, well, mom and dad showed it to me. I'll never forget the time they stepped out and did this or gave that or we went there or we served in this position. And as a result of that, I learned how to trust God. I learned how to live by faith. You know, I saw the most faith in college, all my missionary friends. They grew up on the mission field. They didn't know there was any other way to live, but to trust God. And God provided for them in an amazing way because they'd seen it in their moms and in their dads. So how do we teach faith? Number one, here we go. We're going to read. We're going to recap some things. Number one, you've got to live it. All right. If you're not going to live it, you're really wasting your time, because I'll tell you what the statistics are. If mom. comes to church, there's a buyer by herself. You bring your kids. There's there's something like a nine, 10% chance your kids will follow Christ. If dad comes by himself, think it's like 30%. If mom and dad come together, it goes up to 60 or 70%. But I would dare say that if it's more than coming to church, if you're really living your faith and I'm talking about kids, we're going to make a sacrifice financially. Kids, we're going to make a sacrifice and go serve kids. We're going to make a sacrifice and we're going to go on the mission field for the next couple of weeks and we're going to do something great for God. And you start living it in your day to day lives and they see it lived out, then it will stick. I don't I don't care what else goes right or wrong in their lives. It'll stick. You've got to live it first. Number two, then you can give it. As you're living it, you've got something to give. But if you're not going to live it in your own life, if you're just going to come to church and put in time, you're probably hurting your kids, to be really honest with you, because what you're saying to them is just show up for church. You can live however you want. It doesn't make any difference. So no matter what we teach them, it's going to be really hard for you because you're not giving it to them. You don't have anything to give them. And then thirdly, you've got to share it. And this is this is where you pass on your faith. And I'm at this spot right now with my son. He's 19. He graduates next Friday, going to go off to college in Colorado, and he's going to learn to be a worship leader. And, you know, and I'm all excited about that. But I realize there's a lot of things I haven't taught him yet. And so I'm going to be spending time with him more the next three months. And I got all these things in my head that I still got to pass on to make. Not that I won't get to talk to him again, but as he goes off to college, even though it's a Christian school, I want to make sure that I've given him all the tools he needs to carry out his faith. And then number four, you need to remember it. And this is the principle that the Jewish people have down very well. You need to sit down and it's hard in our busy culture, but you need to sit down and say, you know what, let's just spend some time and let's talk about what God's done for us. And remember those times when you prayed and God answered and remember the times when God blessed you and when you took that missions trip and how God provided or fill in the blank. You got to have something to remember first. And go back and share those memories together of how God provided for you. And 20 years from now, when I throw the floor open for people to stand up, we'll hear testimonies like we heard this morning where people will say, you know what? Times are tough in my house, but my mom lived by faith. I'll never forget the time she. And you fill in the blank. You know, with everything going on again with the Da Vinci code and all this other stuff, this is my theory on it. People are looking for loopholes. In fact, I like what one writer wrote in the Orlando Sentinel. He said it's almost like people looking for an excuse to get out of the word of God. And they want to believe the lie so they don't have to submit to the truth. So they don't have to make the changes. They don't have to go back to the old, old story and admit that I'm a sinner and I need to get right with my Savior, Jesus. And they're banking their eternity on the fact that that's right. In fact, he goes on to say that people live such lives that they're hoping that the gospel is really false and that if it's true, then the really the three big words in their lives are not he is risen. But hey, beer, man. Because you really come down to one or the other in your life, you've got to make some choices. So, moms, we desperately need you today. I've made my plug for you to get a good lunch. I've tried to help you. But we need you to protect our kids spiritually. We need you to teach our kids who they are in Christ. Don't leave it up to our teachers as great as they are. They need it from you. They need to see you live it and teach it and teach your children to live by faith. God, I thank you for for my mom and I thank you for all the moms in this room who have done the best they could to this point. And God, all I ask is that we would take it to the next level, that we would learn from those who have gone before us that we would learn to be obedient, that we would learn to train our children to love you, that we would not say, well, I'll just leave it up to them. God, our children and grandchildren's eternal destinies are in our hands and in our lives. And not only are they listening, but they're watching. So, God, I pray that today might be a turning point in a lot of moms and a lot of dads lives as well. Father, I thank You for Your love. In Jesus' name, amen.